


dream thrum

by majesdanes



Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: Other, bloodbending-related violence & torture, some disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-29
Updated: 2015-12-29
Packaged: 2018-05-10 02:38:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5566090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/majesdanes/pseuds/majesdanes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A:TLA AU; Delphine and Rachel are waterbenders from the Southern Water Tribe. Delphine is content to study healing with the other women of the tribe, but Rachel's ambition drives her to a much darker place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dream thrum

The icy battlements gleam blue-white as the morning sun transcends them, but Delphine’s smile threatens to outshine it. Her steps are feather-light, almost buoyant, despite how thickly the snow coats the land, and cakes her boots in clumps like colorless weights. Beneath mittens two sizes too big, she flexes slender, graceful hands, knowing that they are so much more–knowing, now, what they are truly capable of. For the first time since her training began, she had managed to heal more than a fading bruise, or a fine sliver of a cut. It had come almost naturally–one second, blood and more blood, and a fear-filled tension that clenched itself like a fist deep down in her chest; the next, nothing but bandages soaked through, still fresh, to serve as evidence that he had been injured at all. 

She is flushed with her success, warm with the very memory of it, when she comes across Rachel. Locating her is not difficult to do; she spends so much of her time here, waiting, watching the men practice their bending with an expression that Delphine cannot quite name, or perhaps does not dare to–lip curling, brow raised, as though something foul-smelling had been thrust beneath her nose.

“It is not fair–that we cannot participate,” Delphine had offered once, not so long ago, when she had found her like this. There was a certain sense of cautiousness to the remark, but it was well meant.

“No,” Rachel replied without turning to meet her eyes; something bubbled just under the surface of the word, something harsh in spite of how smoothly it was spoken. “it isn’t. But then, nor is it fair that some students are trained in the art of healing…while others are cast aside.” She had sent a smile over her shoulder then, as though to soften the blame inherent in those words, but it was thin and sharp and stretched too widely on her face.

Delphine was ill at ease.  _We are not the same_ , she remembered thinking,  _as we once were._

Remembering this now, she schools herself to silence–takes the excitement, folds it away, and pockets it to revisit later, when it will be safe. But perhaps the attempt is not as effective as she would like to think; after a moment’s pause, Rachel says, “Well, well. Don’t _you_ look chipper today?” in that slow, steady drawl of hers that only rarely ever bodes well. 

They are walking now, side by side, and the whoosh of bending water soon fades into white noise at their backs. It astounds Delphine that, even in an outsized parka and great, clomping winter boots, Rachel can appear so effortlessly elegant; Delphine is taller, slenderer, and yet she could not be further from matching that easy grace.

For the moment, though, she is not concerned with this. She considers evasion only for the space of a second before beating back the innocent “Do I?” that yearns to be spoken aloud. There is no use being coy, when Rachel will only wrest the truth from her later. Besides, she has no reason to bury her pride at her accomplishments as though it is something shameful; certainly if their roles were reversed, Rachel would be forthcoming about them, and damn the consequences. 

A cluster of younger children dart by, sending snowballs and ice pellets flying every which way, but Delphine ignores them. “I healed a man today.” she admits, earnest. 

Rachel’s pace never slows; it rarely ever does. Perhaps Delphine is elegant in her way–but hers is a peculiar, disjointed kind of grace. Rachel moves like the water she bends–smooth, flowing, not liable to stop for anyone or anything that stands in her path.

Beyond the fur-lined hollow of her hood, Rachel’s smile is a brutal slash of red. Looking at her, Delphine’s skin warms despite the cold. It is she who pauses then, rooted fast. Her legs are leaden and something in her warns, inexplicably, of a coming danger. 

But Rachel only murmurs, “Is that so?” and takes Delphine’s mittened hand in her own; gloveless and pale, it’s dwarfed by the contact. Whatever savagery Delphine had seen in Rachel’s smiling face (if, that was, it had ever existed at all) is gone now; what remains is indefinable–distant, but not, Delphine thinks, _cruel_. She puffs out a laugh, anxious, strangely lyrical; it hangs in the cold air between them, a fine, pale mist. It shrouds Rachel’s features, dulls the sharp points, the starkness of her eyes–but only momentarily. 

A long time had passed since the two had had a match between them, and they take to it now, naturally, without thinking. At Delphine’s bidding, snow rises up from the ground in great, colorless mounds, shaped as though by invisible hands. Her work is practiced, even elegant; there’s artistry in the way that she moves, and the makings of a wise tactician in the decisions that she makes. She knows how to trap an opponent’s feet in ice as unyielding as earth, knows how to fashion snowy cocoons from which only the cleverest of benders can swiftly escape, how to turn pathways slick enough to send others sprawling prostrate beneath her. 

But Rachel is _ruthless_ –and has been, always, for as long as Delphine could remember. She skims a bare hand along the vast, snowy expanse at her feet, and sends jagged bits of ice like broken arrowheads shooting across the snowy plains; they bury themselves in the few portions of skin Delphine wears exposed, leaving cuts and scrapes on the fragile flesh of her collar bone, her cheeks, her forehead. And perhaps, once not all that long ago, Delphine would have cried out–and taken the abuse in stride. But she is growing older, growing stronger–and losing patience. 

Instead, with a pointed flick of her wrist, she dislodges the embedded shards and sends them whistling through the air; they land hard at Rachel’s feet, encircling her. At a gesture from Delphine a strip of snow ices over, like a thin, gleaming carpet swiftly unraveling–but, when it meets Rachel, it  _rises,_ spiraling upward. It snakes around her ankles, her calves, her knees and thighs until, without any means of balancing, she stumbles and falls. 

Uninjured, she hits the ground with a dull thud. Delphine holds her breath, silent, as Rachel raises her head. Her hood had fallen back, leaving her face uncovered. Points of color bloom in her cheeks, stark against skin as pale and unblemished as ivory. The severe cut of her hair brackets her jaw, makes her features seem somehow sharper. And her eyes–her eyes are two dark, impassive pinpricks, and they are fixed intently upon Delphine. 

Rachel twitches a single finger, and the corkscrew curl of ice binding her legs simply  _shatters,_ sending a veritable shower of ice chips flying in every direction. Without thinking, Delphine throws up an arm to shield herself against the gail–but she peeks past the shadow of her forearm to watch as Rachel rises. She seems almost feverish as she does so, teetering, strangely graceless, in her boots. 

At first, Delphine cannot say precisely what it is that unsettles her so terribly–not the lack of response, nor the endless silence; not even the way Rachel’s eyes still hold her own, void of any identifiable emotion. Then Rachel smiles–slowly, deliberately,  _genuinely…_ and Delphine knows. She has never seen Rachel excited before, has never seen her  _exhilarated._

It isn’t until now that she realizes, on some level, that she never wanted to. 

The panic-stricken urge to offer an empty apology rises in Delphine until she can hardly stand it–but she tamps down on it, catches her lower lip between her teeth and bites down so hard blood beads. 

Rachel’s mouth closes, tightens, and soon her eyes follow. For a tense, protracted moment, she stands unmoving, poised, nose tipped toward the sky–all, every part of her, yearning toward some unnameable, unreachable entity. 

When at last she finds herself again, gone is the mere appearance of collectedness; in its wake, a  _true,_  all-encompassing calm settles over Rachel like a blanket.

She spreads both arms wide, wide like a benediction–like an offering. 

And then it happens–a catch, a tug, at the frame of Delphine’s ribcage, as though a single finger had hooked itself around the very bone and jerked her forward by it. Her lips part in an _‘o’_ of strangled disbelief, and she doubles over–moves, marveling, to clutch at the source of the pain…

…and finds that she can't–that her hand is no longer her own. "Rachel,“ she breathes, but no answer comes–and nor will it. 

All those years ago, as Delphine began her training, Rachel waited–and waited, and waited, forever on the outside looking in. It had taken her weeks, as a small, hopeful, desperately ambitious child, to muster the strength to ask of their tutor– _why?_ Why her, why everyone else–why not  _me?_

The old woman was a fool, and a liar, and she fumbled for words that would soothe the ache in Rachel’s chest, but those that she offered were empty, were  _laughably_ transparent. And the way that she had looked at Rachel, when she thought the child’s back was turned–the horror in her eyes, the worry, and the  _revulsion_. She knows now, had known (even  _then_ ) that the elders feared great power. Surely they must, to accept so many mediocre students into their midst, only to thrust Rachel aside–ever on the outskirts, ever ignored, when  _no_ one–not one of them–deserved opportunity half so much. 

And so she takes it for herself instead–reaches out and grips and  _twists,_ and watches as Delphine’s body responds, watches as her arm turns round and round; wrenches Delphine’s head back by those infuriating, cherubic curls; brings her fists together and  _tears_ them apart, so that Delphine’s arms fly out like those of a ragdoll’s flung bodily across the room. (And so she  _takes,_ and she takes, and she  _smiles,_ and she takes.) _  
_

Delphine doesn’t scream until she sends her to her knees, sinks them down, down into the pliant snow; the sound shivers down her spine, resonant, almost musical. (The cadence will linger in her ears long after. She will hear it and think  _power,_ and think  _control,_ and feel sated.)

"Rachel,” Delphine cries, run ragged, “Rachel,  _please–_ please _…"_

She is magnificent like this–supine, pleading, cheeks stained with the evidence of tears recently shed. Her head is bowed, and the curled gilt of her hair obscures her eyes so that she appears as an abstract painting, features cobbled dissonantly together. 

Again, she speaks Rachel’s name–fiercely, frantically. The word comes as though it has been wrenched from her with great effort, colored by the struggle to reclaim a body no longer her own. If sound could bleed, could break, this one would. And so, satisfied at last, Rachel gives it to her. 

Delphine makes a wretched sound halfway between a sob and a shout, and crumples with the force of sudden release. There’s a renewed fire in her eyes when she takes her hands from her face and glances up, breathing hard–but Rachel doesn’t notice. 

The breath hitches euphoric in her throat as she runs the pad of a thumb along her own palm, tenderly tracing the wrinkles, the broken lines. Her eyes slide shut and she smiles, radiant and terrible, knowing that this– _this_ is only the beginning. 


End file.
